Does anybody have advice on certain classes/characters that are worth using? I'm worried with all of the secondary weapon triangle changes, I'm going to train up characters that I shouldn't. I traditionally run magic-heavy teams, but it seems like magic classes got nerfed in favor of hidden weapons, at least in Birthright. I just don't want to roll with an Omnyoji, a Basara, and an Oni Chieftain and find out that I should have more dedicated magic users.

Another thing that is throwing me is that for the first time in FE history, the "dancer" class (Azura) and the early game pre-promote (Felicia/Jakob) actually seem good. Am I crazy to keep using them up through the end of Birthright or should I drop them before I waste too much time leveling them? I'm about to start Chapter 9 on Hard.

@mikehawk: If you arent playing lunatic on birthright then don't worry about it. Birthright hard classic is still challenging enough to be fun, but not so hard that you can ruin your game by using the wrong people. However, in general I have found that archers and ninjas perform better than mages. Especially archers. Mages feel much more restricted in what they are good at this time around. I keep one around and do pretty alright with just that. Main thing to remember is they aren't gods or auto win buttons like in awakening. There's nothing wrong with using the singer or maid either. Both have their uses. Just play around with it. Keep a well balanced roster of people you like. Thanks to the weapon tree changes its actually beneficial to have a variety of weapons and people around.

I'd say if you want to be optimizing, pay attention to stat growths more than classes for now. Pay attention to who's getting higher and more quality stats as you level and keep them around while weeding out the unlucky ones.

At chap 10. Takumi is a possessed beast. Just made him a sniper, and it's just gotten ridiculously awesome how bad ass he is. The quest for Corrins kid is f****** crazy. Felt like i went through hell, and back it just never felt like it would end! Wish the game had more side content, but it's understandable with all the versions that are available.

Magic isn't as strong in Birthright because Hidden Weapons take down the one weakness of weapons (which is Armor) pretty easily.

Dancers have always been good.

The Butler/Maids are not exactly pre-promotes. They gain EXP normally, and their cap is level 40. They're still "Pre-promotes" in that using a class change seal puts them in the tier 2 classes, so a level 14 Jakob changed to a Great Knight will learn Luna next turn.

Chapter 17 was nightmarish. Goddamn master ninja dodging four ~80% attacks in a row.

I just beat Birthright and am trying to get into Conquest, but jumping back into the early story (even from the other side of the conflict) feels like too much. Gonna use Farcry Primal as a nice little palate cleanser and decide from there if I wanna play Conquest/Revelations or just watch the videos of the cutscenes.

Goddamn Kitsunes all have 1-3% crit rates. there's like 27 of them on the map and if one procs its all over.

Conquest has officially kicked my ass into submission. I beat chapter 10 in like three attempts the first time, but tried it again to see if I can get a perfect run and I just cannot do it. Having Azura dead doesn't help.

I started another playthrough with perma death off but I'm not sure if I actually want to do that, its simply not pure. It's a great game, some of the changes are so good and long overdo IMO.

I really like it so far.

So I just finished Birthright on Hard and I would say it's pretty on par with most Fire Emblem normal modes. The only thing I found to be difficult to deal with was (minor gameplay spoilers) the amount of very powerful units they throw at you towards the end of the game. Constantly dealing with Generals, Great Knights, and Berserkers with over 40 sometimes over 50 ATK feels a bit ridiculous. I don't know if they nerfed HP growth rates from Awakening, but very few of my units even hit 40 by the end. I didn't really grind much at all outside of getting supports so I would say Hard mode can be made fairly easy if you invest the time to grind.

I also really enjoy what they did with the class and skill system in Fates. Not regressing to level one and grinding your way back up while still being able to obtain skills from unpromoted classes is a much better way to balance the game. Not to mention it removes the ridiculous amount of grinding you had to do in Awakening to really min max that stuff.

All in all I'm really liking it. From what I've gathered and played, Birthright seems to be the weakest of the trio so I'm stoked to jump into Conquest next. Hopefully it won't break me enough to turn it back down to Normal.

Conquest on Hard is harder than Radiant Dawn on normal, especially if you're trying to get all the paralogues since there's very few moments to get new party members integrated.

Unlike Ryouma who wrecks face on Birthright, Xander is awesome for maybe one chapter before the game throws armor slayers, beast killers, and hammers at your face 24/7 for the next few chapters. You need a good variety of party members because of that.

It's not hard in a difficult sense, but hard in a style to get the kids paralogues because EXP is limited and a lot of the missions are timed so you can't maximize your support building nearly as easily as Birthright.

The biggest difference is that the enemy will use way more debuffs on you. Multiple ninjas, Enfeeble, Freeze, Hex, Entrap, etc. That's why having an awesome tank like Oboro or Hinata strategy won't work nearly as well. You have to have multiple tanks just to avoid them dying from being under debuffs too long.

@theblue: I'm playing Conquest on Hard/Classic, and it's pretty rough at times. The map design isn't quite as sadistic as Thracia 776, but it's up there. I can't directly compare it to Birthright yet, but I get the general impression from the fanbase that it's a significant but not insurmountable jump in difficulty. I'll put it this way: I don't really want to play it on Lunatic anytime soon.

I'm really liking it a lot, but I'm terrible at it. I just don't have a strategic brain or the right amount of patience or something. Thank God for casual mode.

I just finished Conquest on Hard/Casual (started on Lunatic/Classic until I hit the ninja cave and just threw my middle fingers in the air), and boy is Birthright on Lunatic a god damn walk in the park by comparison.

In Conquest, take advantage of the fact that you can grind for support dialogues via castle battles, always use food before every fight, use tonics liberally, and make damn good use of the passive abilities that lower damage received.

Might I recommend pairing up Xander with Kaze until they hit A+, and then turning Xander into a Master Ninja with a partner seal while supported by an A ranked Charlotte.

@turambar: Oh yeah I totally forgot supports went up in castle battles. It hasn't been too bad so far. I usually restart most maps once or twice because I don't know where reinforcements come from or what guys move when, but I definitely am liking the map variety. Chapter 10 stymied me for a bit and the ninja cave gifted me with a nice enemy critical. I haven't been using tonics that much as I'm always short on gold but I need to remind myself to use the mess hall more often.

Oh and making Xander a Master Ninja sounds like a GREAT IDEA.

If you're short on gold, take advantage of the fact that time passes when you get in a castle fight, and can feed Lilith again when you're out. It's only 300 gold ever 2 or 3 feeds, but it adds up. Also, remember that child characters past stage 19 or 20 will come with a special seal of their own, saving the need to use a master seal on them. Haven't tried using said seal on any of the adult characters though.

I haven't even gotten to the branching portion yet, but I like the game so far. Having JUST finished Awakening the little visual improvements are much appreciated. I played Awawkening on Normal/Classic but I'm playing Birthright on Hard/Casual and I think that's a difficulty that suits me much better. All of the vibes I'm getting tell me I would enjoy the Nohr campaign much more, so it's disappointing to hear the writing isn't quite there. I've already gotten that vibe a little bit since basically 2/3rds of the "sisters" I've met in this game so far instantly creeped me out instead of seeming familiar or endearing..

I beat Conquest last night and definitely needed to use a bunch of tonics to do so. While the last 2 chapters aren't all that tough, Chapter 25 took me somewhere in the realm of 5-7 hours to beat, though part of that could be attributable to sleep deprivation. There are some contrivances with the story that I'm really not a fan of, though I did appreciate the rather... unorthodox final boss. I'll probably write something up about it later.

I'm liking it so far. I'm still fairly early on, just finished mission 12 last night, so I haven't upgraded any units yet. For all the hoopla going on around the localization, I appreciate that the characters seem less like one-note anime tropes as they were in Awakening. Mind you, I came around on several of them in Awakening, they were just in need of more than one defining characteristic.

I'm surprised that I've only seen one Paralogue mission so far, and starting to wonder if I'm missing them somehow. You don't need to pay to inspect areas to open them up do you? The one I came across just popped up in the list of locations.

I haven't picked it up yet, but I'm planning on playing Birthright first. Having played Awakening several times on normal/classic and once on hard/classic, is the general consensus that hard/classic fits Birthright best for those with prior experience?

All the paralogues aside from the first are for the children characters. At least that is the case in Conquest.

My biggest gripe with the game remains the lack of one time use save points that the DS games introduced. The infinite use save slots that casual mode introduces is too easily abused while the suspend only of classic mode simply made some stages on lunatic super tedious.

Still plugging along with Birthright when I get the chance, hope to have it done by revelations (which would be easy if i had any free time anymore). I really like it and the fact (spoilers for someones looks i guess?) that my favorite girl from awakening Cordelia has a look alike is pretty dope. Really going out of my way to give weak people XP this time around as in awakening I ended up using Robin and wife in the middle of the map every mission as they evade tanked and one shot everything along with Morgan and Severa eventually

@turambar: Oh yeah, the single-use mid-battle saves were great in Shadow Dragon, though I never played that game on a difficulty high enough to warrant using them a bunch. Because Shadow Dragon is kinda mediocre and making it harder wouldn't really change that.

Finished my Conquest/Normal/Classic playthrough, working on my Birthright/Hard/Casual one now. First off, there is a world in difference in the difficulty, and by that I mean Conquest felt way harder than this. Most of my strategy in Birthright so far has just been setup a good defensive formation and let the enemy fail to push into you. Also, look out because there's likely to be like 8 waves of reinforcements to fill in the ranks you just killed. On the other hand, Conquest felt way more about carefully planning your offensive and reinforcements are there to fuck you over in specific spots, not just as part of the daily routine. I wonder how much of this has to do with my stat rolls though. I remember a lot of my early Conquest guys falling off hard because they simply didn't get good levels. My Birthright ones have been pretty consistently decent.

On a second note in differences, I think I like the Conquest Classes and Weapons more. Conquest was more 'Here's a sword, it does damage. The better sword has less of a chance to hit. The best sword makes you weaker after you use it''. Birthright weapons have stat bonuses and penalties everywhere, just a layer of complexity I don't think I necessarily appreciate. Same thing goes for the classes. Guess what the girl in the big armor and shield does? Tank? Of course. What about the girl using normal looking armor and a naginata. Damage dealer? Nope, also a tank apparently.

So I finished Birthright a couple of days ago and it's kind of a significant drop in difficulty from Conquest. I still enjoyed it, but I honestly might've been better served playing on Lunatic instead of Hard.

However, the real reason I'm bumping this thread is to say that I'm not really digging Revelation thus far (Chapter 11). From what I've seen, the modus operandi for that game has been to make the maps kinda gimmicky and slow-paced, which combined with most of the characters you recruit be slightly under-leveled, it's not doing it for me as much.

@arbitrarywater: I'd like to say Revelation gets better, but it's main shtick is maps that take 800 turns to finish. It's nice having all of the characters and there's some interesting maps down the line, but it doesn't hold a candle to Conquest's maps. I don't really mind having characters show up underleveled, as you have potentially twice as many paralogues to do and there's always the option to grind them up. But yeah, getting some of the better characters late is kind of a bummer.

I'm most of the way through Birthright, and I would have to agree with most calling it a slight iteration on Awakening. And I truly emphasize the word "slight" there. I appreciate the adjustments to the weapon system. I like that instead of having to deal with the headache of weapon degradation, there is a much broader set of weapons with trade-offs for using each one. On the other hand, there isn't much else different. The story is negligibly more interesting than Awakening. The cast is less fun so far.

I'll probably start Conquest next week. I dunno. I know everyone keeps saying it's "better," but I keep hearing it's "better" because it's more like an old Fire Emblem game. And by that, I mean it just rolls back a bunch of changes to create a more restricted gameplay experience you could just as easily mimic by having a mode in Awakening/Birthright where you turn off random battles and such. I'm reserving judgement until I actually play it though. After playing XCom 2, and loving the way they were willing to shake up so many aspects of EU's formula, Fire Emblem so far feels like the series at a "wheel-spinning" point to borrow a term from Jeff.

I finished Birthright about a week ago and found it very enjoyable -- like many have said, a small but all-around improvement on Awakening, which I loved. I'm about two-thirds of the way through Conquest at this point, enjoying that version quite a bit more. There's a lot more variation to the maps and that is constantly changing things up. You have to defend areas, have your units use emplaced weapons to manage waves of enemies, work with small groups of units, etc. It felt refreshing after Birthright's near-universal "rout the enemy."

I'm enjoying the story more in Conquest, and it's been interesting to see how the two versions have differed and intersected when it comes to the story. Seeing the "other side" of certain shared events in the plot was a lot of fun! Really enjoyed both, and at this point I feel more or less resolved to play Revelation and close the whole thing out.

having played conquest, birthright and 12 chapter of revelations I say:

game play is improved and fun

story is still bad, with the support convos having the only good writing

@cav829: The maps are better designed (way less wide-open field maps than Birthright), enemy placements are based around status effects and management of debuffs, and your own units are generally specialized instead of being all-around powerful. The weapon selections are much different, since you trade off reverse weapons and guard naginata for crit-specalized weapons and debuff staves.

Although since you consider the new pair-stance system, hidden weapons, brand new spells, or new weapon triangle just a "slight" thing, I wouldn't play Conquest or Revelation since you're not in it for the gameplay.

@taesoawful: You're making some pretty big assumptions about my opinion there. My comment on Conquest and why I'm concerned going into it based on comments/reviews is this: that's great that the maps and missions are much more interesting/better/challenging than Birthright has felt so far. That said, the commentary I keep hearing beyond the maps is it is more challenging due to removing grinding/going back to the structure of old FE games. That's great and all, but that's not really doing anything to advance the series the same way Awakening did. The better maps/mission structure exists separately from the overall design being closer to older Fire Emblem entries. I'll be able to comment further on it after playing it. Right now, I can only comment on Conquest, which is fun, but only has minor tweaks compared to Awakening.

Yes, the stuff you're talking about is the definition of incremental upgrades and tweaks. How does that translate to not caring about the gameplay? I appreciate (and called out) what you're talking about, but Birthright is not a revolutionary change compared to Awakening.